What is Safer Venues
Safer Venues is a program designed for hospitality staff and operators to enhance awareness, skills, and confidence in actively reducing and intervening in harmful sexual behaviour within licensed venues.
The program offers a comprehensive approach to supporting hospitality, offering in-person workshops and consultations to help integrate sexual violence prevention practices into night-to-night operations.
Safer Venues is available to all hospitality operators and staff in Pōneke, Wellington. This includes venue owners, managers, front of house, door staff and late-night services.
Safer Venues is a joint initiative between Hospitality NZ, RespectEd Aotearoa, and Wellington City Council.
Find out more and book a workshop:
Why is it important
Our hospitality and nightlife scene plays a crucial role in offering social spaces where people from all backgrounds can find enjoyment and connection. However, it is important to recognise that these environments can also create opportunities for the normalisation of harassment and inappropriate sexual behaviour. Safer Venues has been developed to help you build safeguards into your operations and ensure our city environment is one where everyone can enjoy their nights out.
What owners, staff and venues get out of it
- Increased staff confidence and capabilities to identify harmful behaviours and to intervene safely and effectively.
- Know how to safely respond and refer on disclosures of harm.
- Building connection and community between hospitality staff, fostering a sense of guardianship over our city nightlife.
- Tailored support and advice to ensure venue policy and procedures integrate sexual violence prevention principals and best practice response.
- Opportunity to be included in public communications and campaigns that promote the venue's commitment to Safer Venues.
- Easy access to the training programme including no fees
- Awareness and understanding of the cultural significance of the whenua (land) that your venues operate on. Your staff will build a connection to the whenua (land) and promote a sense of kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over patrons.
We are delivering regular workshops in Pōneke, Wellington.
Background: How and Why did safer venues come to be?
Background In March 2021, local community groups raised their concerns about declining perceptions of safety in central Wellington, particularly in relation to young women’s experiences of sexual violence and gender-based harassment. An online survey, led by two young Victoria University students, received over 2600 responses which highlighted harrowing personal accounts of harassment, harm and sexual assault.
In response to the gathering momentum, the LetUsLive rally was spearheaded by the Wellington Alliance Against Sexual Violence (WAASV), a coalition of youth-led organisations and community members passionate about sexual violence prevention. The Alliance called for Wellington City Council and partner accountability to prioritise and invest in sexual violence prevention at the local government level.
The LetUsLive Rally had three core requests of Wellington City Council:
- 1. Create and implement a new vision for Courtenay Place, Cuba St and surrounding areas that are accessible, people-focused, and prioritises community building.
- 2. Work with hospitality staff, management and patrons to create a city-wide strategy to keep our bars, clubs and restaurants free from sexual violence.
- 3. Invest in sexual violence prevention through increasing existing funding to local prevention organisations, and creating additional funding streams for community-based projects.
The Safer Venues Project is a direct response to request number two, upheld by a partnership between Hospitality NZ, RespectEd and Wellington City Council to take a purposeful and holistic approach to prevent sexual harm in licensed venues. The training programme is funded by Wellington City Council and was developed by RespectEd Aotearoa.